Muse
by Yugao
Summary: They inspired, in their own way. A character study on the kunoichi. 5: Hinata is Urania, and she is a star on earth.
1. Calliope

_**Muse**_

_**Yugao**_

_**Summary: **_They inspired, in their own way.

_**Author's Note: **_This has actually been floating around in my head for a year but I only got around to doing it now, for reasons I'm not really sure of. I was obsessed with Greek Mythology for a while and the idea of comparing the muses to the female characters in Naruto was very alluring, so I decided to go on and do it. This took some research, so thanks to Edith Hamilton whose book I used as a basis for some facts on the muses themselves. I decided to start with Tsunade for no real reason, and the succeeding drabbles will be in no particular order.

_**Disclaimer: **_I do not own the Muses, and I do not own Naruto either.

* * *

**Calliope**

_I am the beauty of speech, the muse of heroes and their stories._

"You are the best of them."

Tsunade was never sure what they had meant by that, though the people who told her so knew nothing of the others' strikingly similar opinions of her. It was a compliment, to be sure, and whoever it was received either a bright thank-you or a swift, playful punch to the shoulder, depending on who was saying it.

Her grandfather was the first to say it, when she was just a little girl, not even waist-high compared to the man who was the First Hokage. She was four years old and hopeful, and she stood at his side tugging on the end of his shirt (the extent of her reach), her amber eyes glistening as she stared up at him. He laughed as he put a hand on her head and picked her up, carrying her on his shoulders as she giggled. He smiled back up at her blindly (as she had put her small hands over his eyes) and said, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."

Her teacher, Sarutobi-sensei (whom she would later come to know as the Sandaime) was the second. It was true that she had never been his favorite student – such an honor had always gone to Orochimaru, but she never gave up trying, never gave up striving for the respect she wanted from her sensei. He must have noticed that despite the fact she was neither the most intelligent (as Orochimaru was) or the most resourceful (as Jiraiya had always been) in the group, she was the most driven, and after a hard day's training Sarutobi made it a point to come up to her, pat her on the back, and say, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."

Jiraiya (_oh, Jiraiya, you fool, _she couldn't help but think, with tears in her eyes, as she remembered) was the third. She had somehow been talked into a game of strip poker, and in that adolescent defiance she had tried (and failed, miserably) to beat her teammate and closest friend. He was laughing – still fully clothed – as he put her bets in his bag, not staring openly (or even at all, come to think of it) at her naked figure, as she had half-expected him to. Some time afterward she found herself laughing along with him (when she normally would've punched him straight to Suna), though she couldn't quite remember why, and his back was turned as she dressed herself, but she could hear the smile in his voice as he told her, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."

Dan came next. How could she ever forget? She remembered it the day after he died, the day after that, and the day after that. And she remembered it the day of his funeral, as she put the solitary white rose on top of his coffin just before it was lowered into his grave. She could still remember his eyes, his smile, and the pouring rain outside as his lips touched her forehead and he held her close. She almost missed it because of the sound of the rain splattering across the windowpane, but she was lucky to have heard him when he murmured, "Tsunade, you are the best of them."

Shizune was the fifth. She was just a girl at the time, idealistic but with crushed hopes, after her uncle had died. She had no one else to turn to, no alternate road to take – she wasn't one of the lucky ones born into a clan, or at the very least into a large family. It was just her and her uncle, until the man she had come to look at as a father passed away. She had been following the woman out of Konoha and pleaded for her to take her on as an apprentice, an assistant, as _anything, _as long as she was something and had something to hope for. And when Tsunade asked why _her, _why this, Shizune could only reply, "Because, Tsunade-sama, you are the best of them."

Sakura was the sixth. The Fifth Hokage knew as well as anyone else in the village that she was crushed beyond belief when Uchiha Sasuke left, but pity was not the reason she took the candy-haired kunoichi on as a student. She had seen promise in the girl, but above and beyond that she had seen _herself – _neither the most skilled nor the craftiest in the team, but with enough fire to light all of Konoha if she had to. They had been training in the meadow that day, and the ground was pushed up all around them thanks only to Tsunade's sheer strength, and at first (before she begun to be able to do all this herself) she was only able to say, in awe, "Wow, Tsunade-sama, you are the best of them."

Naruto was the seventh. He had been racked up in his own misery after Jiraiya's death (_and who wasn't, _Tsunade thought to herself) and had only just found out that Tsunade had lied when she said she was the one who sent him to the mission that killed him (_Jiraiya, you idiot, you should have stayed. What did you leave me for; I don't need any more of this on my mind, but I can't help it). _They both remembered Naruto's outburst when she had first told him, and he hung his head in apologetics. "I knew you couldn't have done it. I could hardly believe it when you said you did," he had said by way of apology. And when she asked him why he had doubted, he answered, "Because, Tsunade-obaa-chan, you are the best of them."

There were times, now, when she felt that she had not done enough in her life. Here she was, fifty-something and past her prime; her best years were behind her. She was a compulsive drunkard and gambler, with an irritable temper and horrible luck. She was the very epitome of imperfection, though her fresh-faced appearance gave no hint towards that.

They called her the best of them, but she felt like the worst.

She had lost too many people (_too many, too many for one to bear, _she had sobbed with sake on her lips) to death. She had lost her grandfather, her parents, her brother, her lover, and now… and now… Her eyes welled up with tears as the memory of that moment with her best friend, her closest, her enemy and her confidant, her rival and her ally, played over and over and over in her mind. She was still not immune to the sadness that came with losing someone.

But strong as she was, she wasn't brave enough to cry.

She was the Hokage. The fifth in a line of greats, a line of people who must have heard the same compliment (_Tsunade, _he had told her, though his back was turned, _you are the best of them_). Her role now was not to just be Tsunade but to be the Hokage, to be fitting of the praise. In a way Konoha was a child, _her _child, the one she had sacrificed having a family, having children of her own for. Too many people looked up to her, saw her as the goal they wanted to reach, the paragon they wanted to emulate if they were ever going to grow. Too many people thought she was the best of them.

She wasn't, but she was doing her hardest to try to be.

_I am Calliope, and I am the best of them._

_**Author's Note: **_Myeah, I probably should have stuck SPOILER across the whole page, but if you didn't know this was going to happen, I am very, very sorry. As for the next piece (if you want me to continue, that is), if you want to, you could suggest which kunoichi I write about xD I still have no idea who I'm doing next. Please review? Only if you wanna.


	2. Thalia

_**Muse**_

_**Yugao**_

_**Author's Note: **_Thanks for those who read and/or reviewed Tsunade's chapter; that was really nice of you. And since greensapphire asked for it, this installment is about Tenten. (Secretly I was hoping for that answer since Tenten is probably my favorite female character in Naruto so… yeah) This might come out a lot more angst-ridden than I had hoped it would be, but what the hey.

_**Disclaimer: **_I do not own the Muses, and I do not own Naruto either.

* * *

**Thalia**

_I am the blossoming one, the muse of comedy and laughter._

Too few people understood why she was always so happy.

For one thing, she was in no way the most beautiful in the village. She was pretty, and some people would say that was being generous. There was nothing unique about her features; her eyes were brown and so was her hair, both lacking in the unusual aesthetics in the other girls' appearances. Her dull, rather mousy brown hair couldn't possibly compete with Ino's platinum hair, or Sakura's cotton-candy locks, could it? Nor could her brown, rather uninteresting almond-shaped eyes were no match for Hinata's Byakugan or even Temari's fiery green eyes. She was plain, with a face that was forgettable.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't even the most graceful, though it was not like that mattered to her. Even away from missions she moved with the calculated speed and dexterity of a kunoichi; it seemed to them like she had been made to choose between being a _girl _and being a _ninja, _and she chose the latter, taking it to heart as often as she possibly could, as if her life depended on it. The boys in her team treated her like one of them, respecting the fact that she could train for hours on end and not care about the state of her hair and clothes. She was one of the _boys, _and nothing more.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the most intelligent. That title had always gone to her teammate, Neji, and then later to the Nara boy who had been the first to become Chuunin. She'd had to cheat on the objective part of the Chuunin exams, and while the way by which she cheated was rather ingenious, people doubted she would have passed otherwise. She was street-smart, not intelligent, and though she would survive (and, perhaps, they said, thrive) in the dog-eat-dog world that was the ninja scene, it didn't deny the fact that she was not made for the classroom.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the most skilled. It didn't come as a shock to many that she had lost her first battle in the Chuunin exams to the Sand-nin Temari (though Neji's stunned silence was not because he hadn't seen it coming, but because he had hoped it wouldn't), as the only thing she had in her repertoire was a barrage of (supposedly) well-placed kunai and shuriken. She probably realized, as she lay in her hospital bed, that though Team Gai prided themselves on having a kunoichi with 100 accuracy, it was not going to be enough, and that it might never be enough.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the luckiest. It seemed, in fact, that Lady Luck wanted to avoid her by all means possible; she was an orphan, without a surname or a special clan ability (or even a mildly enjoyable childhood) to boast of. She was placed in a team alongside Hyuuga Neji, who had always been her polar 

opposite in this respect – she should have, by all rights, felt overshadowed by the appellation of _Hyuuga-san, _the white-eyed Byakugan everyone in the family possessed, and the rich, rich history they had. But she didn't – it simply taught her to attribute everything she had not to luck (or _fate _as Neji had always, always called it) but to her own hard work and determination to get ahead.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the most detached. You had to be, if you were a ninja. It was practically a work ethic: keeping yourself from becoming too emotionally attached to the mission at hand. But it had been her first A-rank mission and the first time that she had taken a life, and she looked on remorsefully, regretfully, as the rain made the blood run down her wrists, her arms, as if eternalizing her sin. The next day, when they returned to Konoha, she carried the burden of knowing that she had killed someone (it was the mission directive, true, but she never knew it would hurt so much) on her shoulders, but not on her face.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the bravest, even though she had sometimes prided herself on being so. But when she realized she had fallen in more-than-like with her teammate and best friend she couldn't find the courage to tell him. It was easy for her to steel herself to fight missing-nin and enemy shinobi, but somehow not as easy to own up to what she felt and what she wanted to say. Without her doing anything, life as usual went on between them, no matter how much she wanted, how badly she wanted to tell him everyday how she felt.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the most sincere. Neji had told the team – his team, her team, _their _team – that the Hyuuga clan was pushing for him to marry, and that he was going to have to choose someone soon. She told him, no matter how much it hurt her to say so, that everything was going to be all right, and that sooner or later he'd find the right person to ask. She had never hoped to be that right person, and simply saying those words tugged at her heartstrings painfully. She was only saddened that her time with him had probably run out.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the most just. She was too soft-hearted for that. She had always put more stock in mercy than she ever did in fairness or justice or at least other people's views on them – which was why, when their team was tasked to subdue an enemy detachment, she did just that. She subdued them, without death and without further pain, and it was only when they were unconscious that she turned away and let her teammates do what she couldn't. They returned to the village, their grisly duty done, and she felt another sharp pain in her heart for living a life like this.

Still, she smiled.

She wasn't the best, although her whole life was devoted in trying to be the best she could be to the people she loved and the ones she didn't. It wasn't that she was always happy – she had more than her fair share of misfortunes, more than her fair share of tough luck. But she had to keep smiling, because it was that smile that assured her teammates, her friends, her teachers – everyone – that there was still hope. That she would keep fighting. That there was nothing that could bring her down, and that things would get better.

_I am Thalia, and I am invincible._

_**Author's Note: **_Okay, I'm not entirely sure where this had come from. Haha. I was just typing away and suddenly it had become a two-page piece that seemed to fit in well with the Tenten-Thalia analogy. Tell me what you thought of it? And also please tell me who you'd like to see next. xD


	3. Terpsichore

**_Muse _**

**_Yugao_**

**_Author's Note: _**Because I've been on an Ino high lately, I decided to do her character study next. This one was pretty easy to decide, although there are no real references to Ino being a dancer; it's just too easy to imagine Ino as being graceful, as dancing. Isn't it? Haha. Anyway, yeah. I'll try to prewrite the next few chapters too so that I can post them quickly.

**_Disclaimer: _**I do not own the Muses, and I do not own Naruto either.

* * *

**Terpsichore**

_I am the one who delights in grace, the muse of song and dance. _

Everything was just a dance to her.

It was so easy to look at her and think of poetry in motion, because that's what she was - grace, personified. It seemed that she was not just gifted with it, but aureoled in it, as if it was a part of her. And maybe it was. Who could deny the harshly cruel beauty in her features? It oozed from every inch of her: from her long, ash-blond hair; from her vibrant turquoise eyes; from her pale skin.

Maybe it was conscious; people sometimes thought of her as a perverse little Madonna, outwardly innocent but secretly otherwise. They thought of her as bewitching, as one who ensnared men's hearts with her beauty or her grace or her methods of coy seduction, only to take those same hearts and shatter them into as many pieces as possible. But apparent heartlessness was an effect of apparent perfection, and despite everything they said about her she raised her head high and wouldn't let them bring her down.

Then again, maybe it was unconscious; after all, how could such effortless fluidity of each movement, of each word that passed her lips, of each shy, well-placed smile possibly be deliberate? There was no way that what she was doing was intentional, simply because it couldn't be done. Everything was so naturally graceful with her that it didn't seem humanly possible for anyone to equal that grace. She was one of the more blessed ones, blessed with this lack of the need for pretenses to be who she was.

She saw everything as a dance.

Battle was a dance. A fatal dance, she knew that much - there were no ornate paper fans or shamisen here. No, in a dance like this there was no need for any such flamboyance. No music but the sound of the wind in the trees, the ring of metal meeting metal, and her own heavy, ragged breathing. No props but the kunai in her hand and the shuriken in her pouch. No moves but the slashing, the rending of flesh, and the footwork that went with it. But it was a dance all the same; she faced it with a serious, reticent readiness, and she did not hesitate once. Hesitation was a flaw in the performance, a skip of the music, and she could not afford such a thing. This was partly what made her such an efficient kunoichi - her single-minded determination to complete a task and finish a mission without the least bit of indecision. They didn't know whether to interpret this as her dedication to Konoha or as a strange mixture of innocence and ruthlessness.

Training was a dance. Morning after morning and night after night, though she complained to no end about the heat or the cold or the noise or the silence, she never complained about having to fight. Unlike with actual fights she knew that things weren't going to go too far, and she allowed herself the complex experimentation of this or that move; she allowed herself to try the things she had never done before, because she knew she couldn't come close to death. Dancing was part trust in your partner, and she trusted Shikamaru and Chouji with her life. She knew they'd play their part and catch her whenever she needed to be caught. That's what partners were supposed to do, after all, and they were the best anyone could have.

Friendship was a dance. Albeit it was an unrehearsed, spontaneous one, it was a dance nonetheless; one that went slightly out of sync, out of time, when she inadvertently traded in a lifelong friendship for a rivalry over a boy. The steps to this were hard, rigid, stiff; she knew that if she had to go on this way it would feel constrictive to her, against the very nature of the freedom she was supposed to feel. Which was exactly why, after the Chuunin exams, she rekindled a shaky friendship with the girl she had known all her life - Forehead Girl, Billboard Brow, Sakura-chan, Haruno Sakura.

Love was a dance. She moved, people saw, from partner to partner subtly, and not suddenly. She seemed to capture people's hearts effortlessly, despite all her shortcomings. She entranced people with every movement, every word, every breath, though whether this enchanting seduction was intentional or not, no one could ever tell. They could only tell how she managed to flit from sweetheart to sweetheart, as a butterfly would from flower to flower - though it never seemed to be more than just a pretty performance in the end. Because come curtain-call, she always returned to thinking about the same 'dance partner' who had persistently been well out of her reach.

Her emotions were a dance. They were told, early on, that as kunoichi they were supposed to tear their hearts out and feel nothing, be attached to nothing, love nothing. Their duty was to Konoha alone; Konoha and nothing else. But for a dancer (who engages in such a sensitive, emotional art) that was not possible. It had never been an option, to be completely rid of what spurred her to keep going day after day. So instead of throwing them to the wind, she put a mask over them. She hid behind a façade of self-assurance and vanity. In many other people's eyes this was her strength, her invulnerability. Her self-image was that of a person who wouldn't be defeated. But in her own eyes it was her weakness.

_I am Terpsichore, and I am apparent perfection._

**_Author's Note: _**Yeah, forgive me if there are any typographical errors; I typed this straight into the document manager (which doesn't have spell-check) and the keyboard in this place is horrible. Hahaha. The things I do for you awesome people! And today is my Ino day (Ino's "mine" on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and I guess that helped me write her quickly.


	4. Clio

_**Muse**_

_**Yugao**_

_**Author's Note: **_I decided to do Temari for this installment, but please, please go easy on me since this really is my first time at writing Temari (so some things can and will be off-base). It might also be comparatively shorter to Tenten's and Tsunade's (Ino's was also shorter than theirs, but I liked the first two characters so it was easy enough to get more words in) from here on in. I apologize, but I'll try to keep the quality (if not the quantity) uniform.

_**Disclaimer: **_I do not own the Muses, and I do not own Naruto either.

* * *

**Clio**

_I am the glorious one, the muse of history._

* * *

She remembered.

She had never been the type of person who lived in the past – she was more the type to live the present, and live it to its fullest. She was not one for old photographs stowed away in a musty attic, or sessions of reminiscence and nostalgia. She thought herself above all that, above having to _remember _something already gone in order to feel fulfilled. Her fulfillment, she believed, was never in any time but the _now, _the present. If she was ever rash or impatient it was because she hated delays, or wasting her time, because _her time _was precious. Her _present _was precious. She didn't have enough of it.

Despite all this, though, she couldn't help but remember.

She couldn't help but remember their father, the former Kazekage of Sunagakure no Sato, who had treated them more as his subordinates than as his children. There was never much love in their family; their mother died earlier on and their father was never the same. Gaara was the youngest, but was never treated with the same love that most other 'youngest-children' were accustomed to receiving. Kankuro, the middle child, was forced to be stronger, forced to grow up way before his time. And she – Temari, the eldest of them – had to steel herself and look out for them as their parents should have.

She couldn't help but remember Gaara, who was at the time of their father's plotting, only six years old. She had known, of course, what was happening; they all did. They all knew that he was the vessel of Shukaku, that he could grow up to become a demon that cared only for himself, as his name suggested. She knew that he had not cared about _them, _had not seen them as his family at all, but she remembered her own trepidation at the thought of her little brother's death. And in some strange way, she was thankful and relieved to hear that he had killed all his assassins and escaped death – it was the first of many, many times he would have to do so.

She couldn't help but remember Yashamaru, who had taken Gaara in just to fulfill his obligation to their mother, to Gaara's mother, to his sister. But she knew that he would still hold a grudge against the little boy whose birth killed one of the people closest to his heart. She knew that, when the time came, he wouldn't hesitate to take a mission from their father, to kill the very person their mother had asked him to protect. But all she could do was remember, and it was not her place to interfere or to change things where certain problems had to be solved for themselves; in hindsight she was little more than a third-party observer, watching it all play out before her eyes instead of taking part in what was going on around her.

She couldn't help but remember Shikamaru, who was everything she was not: calm, cool, and calculating. She remembered her annoyance of him, her irritation that he got everything he wanted through his intellect, although he never had to do much more than lift a finger to get where he wanted to be. She envied his genius, the fact that he was destined to effortlessly rise up the ranks. Somewhere along the way envy turned into admiration, and that admiration turned into a desire to see him again, to be around him, no matter how annoying his constant mumblings of "Mendokuse" were.

She couldn't help but remember Tenten, the girl she had fought in her first battle in the Chuunin exams. She knew that the girl held promise; after all, there was something to be said for kunoichi with a track record of 100 accuracy. And she, unlike Temari, had not come from an important family. _She _was not the daughter of a Kazekage; _she _didn't have special jutsu passed down from father to child; _she _didn't have the benefit of a family to be there for her when she needed someone to lean on when she was younger. It was in Tenten that Temari realized how better off she was. Sad as it was that her youngest brother was viewed a monster, and that their father cared little, if at all, for them, at least they had each other. And it was with compassion, not mercilessness, that Temari finished the battle as quickly as she could.

She couldn't help but remember Naruto, who had taught Gaara how to care. It was seeing this person, who was so _like _him and yet so _unlike _him at the same time, that opened the youngest Sand sibling's eyes. Naruto had a tailed demon locked inside him, too, like Gaara had; he was an orphan and friendless for a long time, much like Gaara was. However, unlike Gaara, he had managed to see beyond the suffering that the demon inside him had caused. He chose to make friends, to laugh, to live life the way it was meant to be lived. And Gaara saw he was missing out. And it was only then, only then, that he called her 'sister'.

She couldn't help but remember Kankuro, sick and battered and bruised and fragile and cursing himself for being too weak, too weak to save his brother. It was the first time that she had seen him so caught up with emotion that it took her breath away to see him this mad at himself. She had never thought that he loved Gaara enough to risk his life, to want to risk his life, for him, but it was true, and she saw proof of it as he lay there in bed and told her that he wanted Gaara back in Suna as soon as was possible, and that the moment he got up he'd go and help the Konoha team that had been sent to do the job he wanted more than anything.

Sabaku no Temari was never one to live in the past, but she just couldn't help but remember.

_I am Clio, and I am remembrance._

_**Author's Note: **_Yeah, a _lot _shorter than the rest, but I needed to cut it short since I couldn't think of any more people.


	5. Urania

_**Muse**_

_**Yugao**_

_**Author's Note: **_I wanted to put priority on updating all the fics I already have up, instead of writing new things and then regretting not being able to finish the ones I've already posted. I do too much of that already. I'm hoping I could finish _Muse _before the second semester starts, or it'll take forever to update (again). So… yeah. I started this not knowing whose chapter it would be, so here goes nothing.

_**Disclaimer: **_I own nothing/no one.

* * *

**Urania**

_I am the celestial one, the muse of astronomy._

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

This would not be the first time anyone would have heard Hyuuga Hinata saying this, as she looked up at the vast expanse of dark blue sky and at its array of glittering stars. People didn't always understand what it was about them that fascinated her so, but there was nothing Hinata enjoyed more than lying down on the grass in the meadow they trained in day after day when the sun had already set, just to look up and see the velvet sky dotted with stars.

People smiled and thought this was only fitting, her love of stars: she was so, so much like a star herself, though different people thought so for different reasons.

Kiba thought she was like a star. She had that unreachable quality down perfectly, after all – and though he was prone to thinking this with bitterness he could never think of her with any negativity. She was the kind you admired from afar, because you knew there was no chance of doing any more than that. He could be fiercely protective of her; he could train with her; he could have her back whenever she needed him to – but any closer and he'd burn, he knew, and decided that it was best to stay only so close.

Shino thought she was like a star. She was so full of energy, although people thought that her silence and shyness hindered this. When they trained together, as they often did, she was ready for _anything. _She never stopped, not even once, even though it was obvious that she was exhausted and needed some time to rest, to stop, to catch her breath, _anything, _really – but she never did. And they never forced her to, because they knew perfectly well that she would tell them if she feared that she was pushing herself too hard.

Kurenai thought she was like a star. No one else knew this, but what the woman admired most in the only female member of her genin cell was the girl's fire. It was imperceptible to some, but she knew that if she had to, Hinata would give _everything _up for the people she held close to her heart, without a single moment of hesitation. Hinata knew as well as any kunoichi did that there was no room for second-guessing in a life like theirs, and so she knew she would never second-guess a decision to risk everything for her village.

Sakura thought she was like a star. Hinata was the kind you couldn't help but look up to. Sure, _she _was the Hokage's apprentice. Sure, she had everything the average kunoichi would ever want and ever need. But the truth was, it was _Hinata _who had everything. She was the heiress of a clan that doubted her, the cousin of a prodigy who hated everything she stood for, the admirer of a boy who hardly noticed she was there – and despite all of this she managed to stay strong. And it was in this way that Sakura knew that she couldn't measure up; if she were in the same position she didn't think she had the strength to hold her head up quite like Hinata did.

Tenten thought she was like a star. The Hyuuga girl was star-shaped, in one way or another. Like the way people thought of stars, there was more to her than met the eye. The weapons mistress knew that her close friend was not the one-dimensional shy girl that other people saw at first glance – just like stars really weren't the simple, five-pointed shapes she used to doodle on the margins of her notebooks but unpredictable, effervescent balls of fire and light. Hinata didn't seem like a mystery to many, but Tenten knew better.

Neji thought she was like a star. It was every child's dream to reach the stars, to stand among them, and when Neji was younger he was no different. As he grew up, though, he had wanted to reach a different kind of star. He envied her: her main branch status, the fact that she was next in line as the Hyuuga clan head, the way people saw her as the golden girl of their generation while _he _was treated like every other Hyuuga branch member despite the fact that he tried, he did, he tried (maybe too hard) to best her and show them that he _could _reach the stars.

Tsunade thought she was like a star. The Hokage never found the opportunity to tell anyone, but she had always admired Hinata – out of all the female genin she had always felt the need to shelter the young Hyuuga, although she knew as well as anyone else did that the Byakugan bloodline limit left little to be protected. She felt the need to cup her hands protectively around the girl to assure herself that _her _flame would never die out before it had to. There was no need for this, she knew: stars were self-sufficient and did not need such protectiveness, but she couldn't help it.

Naruto thought she was like a star. He figured that there was something decidedly similar in the way that stars twinkled and entranced and the way _she _drew people in, pulling people closer with her small smiles that were always of the utmost sincerity. She was beautiful in ways he could never really put into words: she managed to make him feel… lighter, as if he were floating in space where there was no reality if not for him, her, the both of them, together. And when that happened, he wouldn't have it any other way.

_I am Urania, and I am a star on earth._

_**Author's Note: **_I wasn't that happy with the way this came out, but I've been in a crummy mood lately so yes. Haha.


End file.
